Results tagged “holiday”

An 11-year-old girl has mysteriously jumped to her death at school this morning, the first day she returned from the Spring Festival vacation. At around 8:50am, right after her first class, the girl jumped off from the sixth floor of Shanghai Children's Dream Experiment School. A teacher told Xinmin.cn that the girl had been unhappy with her mother, and that the two had a “strained relationship” during the winter holiday. Source: Shanghai Daily

                                      

Thanks to everyone who came out Saturday night to celebrate with us. And a special thanks to Cotton's, American Craft Beer Partners and, of course, Santa Claus for making it all possible. Happy Holidays!

Welcome to the latest episode of Chinese Soundbites, a podcast series brought to you by ChinesePod and Shanghaiist. Every week we'll be bringing you topics and words pulled straight from the headlines, in Mandarin Chinese.

It's widely known that Microsoft has taken a fairly laxed approach to software piracy in China. Bill Gates has even admitted to Fortune Magazine last year that "while it was terrible that people in China pirated so much software, if they were going to pirate anybody's software he'd certainly prefer it be Microsoft's."

We were itching to get out of the city for the weekend. Every couple months, you need to escape the pollution and noise for a few days to somewhere quiet and outdoorsy, just to catch some peace and oxygen. But getting out of Shanghai can be a little tricky. Hopping on a plane to Sanya or Boracay is perhaps the most hassle-free option too, but you need longer than a weekend for those trips.

"At this moment, we have deep concern for people in the world who are suffering from war, poverty, illness and natural calamities... Chinese people are deeply sympathetic to them and willing to do our best to help them get out of their plights as early as possible."

We want some of whatever this guy is smoking:

Following up on yesterday's post about China's new holiday lineup for 2008, we now have the official official list of dates, so now everyone knows what Saturdays and Sundays they might be asked to work (and that nonsense starts soon). Here we go:

Well, then: Oops. What last month we said was going to happen, this month was made official. China has scrapped May holiday, one of its three Golden Weeks, and turned three traditional festivals into national holidays. Here's how your official 2008 Chinese holiday schedule now looks:

Where to go, where to go: Shanghaiist is still trying to figure out where to carb up for our big dodgeball game tonight (that's right, patches, dodgeball). Pure, the fancy new Japanese restaurant that is part of The Collection at Xintiandi, has been offering their new sushi menu for 50% off since last Thursday. The special ends tomorrow night, however, so if we enjoy ourselves tonight we may find ourselves there tomorrow as well. On...

... with SCAA's Christmas gala which happens this evening at 6.30pm at O'Malleys! RMB 100 at the door gets you a glass of Champagne, two standard drinks, comfort food, lots of free gifts and one Holiday Raffle ticket for a chance to win over 100 prizes totaling more than RMB 150,000! For those of you on the hunt for Christmas trees but don't know where to get them, Smart Shanghai has the answers! 'Tis the...

You will get to see scenes like the one above on Nanjing Lu a lot less often from next year on. All those rumours that we've been hearing have been confirmed. The May Golden Week holiday is going to be cut down to one day, and this may happen as early as 2008. In the meanwhile, three more national holiday have been added: namely the Tomb-sweeping Festival, Dragon Boat Festival and Mid-Autumn Festival. This...

WINOPETE AT THE RACE TRACK: MELBOURNE CUP DAY PARTIES

Photo from Swiss James of ISpyShanghai.com

A quick note to interrupt your last-minute Halloween costume shopping (we made our costume yesterday ... you'll definitely hear us coming) to let you know what films we plan to show at the big Shanghaiist Halloween Party on Saturday night. If you haven't been to Shanghai Studio, it's a spooky maze-like place that occupies an old bomb shelter. So if music and dancing are your things, we've got rooms for that. If chatting and drinking are your things, we've got rooms for that, too. For those of you who have "other" activities in mind, there are also plenty of dark hallways and corners for you to do your thing.

Have you (like us) waited until the last minute to get your Halloween costume even though back in September you promised yourself you'd start putting it together early this year? Not to worry. Shanghaiist has you covered. Here's a list of places to get pre-made Halloween costumes and accessories that we put together last year. We've given them a call and apparently they're all still up and running. If any of you finds any other great places for costumes, please email us at info AT shanghaiist DOT com and we will add them on to the list.

Holiday House: 1188 Panyu Lu, near Hongqiao lu (番禺路1188号，近虹桥路). Tel: 64477189, Open 9:30-6:00 pm (Sucky hours!). A kind of one-stop-shop for costumes for kids and adults and decorations. Staff speak English and can be pretty surly.

Shanghai Zhongbao Dress Ornament Co. Ltd.: No.99, Lane 2035 Wuzhong Lu (吴中路2035弄99号). Open until 9pm on weekdays and slightly different hours on the weekend (we suggest you call first). Tel: 64780825/54859199, Fax: 6419 3855, E-mail: zbxj@public8.sta.net.cn. Longer hours, wider adult selection and cheaper prices, but really far from downtown (expect a 40-50 kuai cab fare) and a little hard to find as Lane 2035 is hard to see, the street numbers are out of order and the "99" is spray painted on the wall, and it's a warehouse behind a gate. But it's worth the effort!

Nantai Costume Company: 181 Henan Zhong Lu, near Fuzhou Lu (河南中路181号，进福州路) Tel: 63238344. This place, five minutes west of the Bund outfits many of the local opera troupes and has the ambience of a factory store. Shelves are stacked with everything from tasseled platform slippers to stringy beards. Say hello to Chun Ge, the store's pet mynah bird -- he'll say ni hao back.

News tidbits from the public transportation world:

Over the week-long National Day holiday:
• Total airline passenger numbers climbed a quarter on the year-earlier period to 3.75 million people, with the record of 540,000 was set on September 30 - the highest number of people to be flying on a single day.
• One million computers were infected with various computer viruses, and 118,000 computers crashed on one day alone.
• Retail sales of consumer goods in China rose 16 percent year-on-year to almost 350 billion yuan.

When it rains, it pours. As if there were not enough fantastic live music acts coming to Shanghai over the holiday, we’ve discovered that there is one more to add to the list. 12-time Grammy Award winner Chick Corea will be playing a solo piano concert at the Oriental Arts Center to begin a number of solo concerts he is doing in China and Europe this month. He played the last three nights in Tokyo with Bela Fleck together, and they will continue touring together next month. That’s a duet we would love to hear, but it looks like they won’t be making it out this way on their tour. The two of them have recently recorded an album together called “The Enchantment” which is already on sale. We haven’t heard it yet but look forward to checking it out!

If you're still thinking of getting to Sanya (which has often been touted as the Hawaii of China) for that long-awaited getaway, you might very well change your mind after you see this video. Some Chinese guys on holiday in Sanya were disappointed to find out that it wasn't only not all that it was cracked up to be, it was also very dirty and polluted. Armed with a digital camera, they took down everything that they saw. They found a leak in the sewer pipe of a certain five-star hotel which released untreated sewage water into the ocean and a foul stench into the air. The waters are murky, the corals have died and nothing is living in it anymore. At the end of the clip, the video makers entreat local authorities to do something about the situation. We wonder if anything will be done at all if no names were named? Or will their eyes finally be opened only when the pollution inflicts a severe damage on Sanya's tourism market and people's livelihoods are hurt?

If, like us, you're stuck in Shanghai over the National Day holiday (hey, somebody's gotta give everyone else stuck in town something to read and entertain themselves with, right?), we suggest you stay right at home. Because if you haven't been around during any Golden Week, you won't know what a nightmare it is going to be out there.

... why not get a terracotta one instead? That statue on the right, ladies and gentlemen, is Roger Federer.

We love this short video of the sights and sounds of rural Tibet. No narration, no subtitles, just powerful imagery. And oh, it makes us realise how in need of a holiday we really are. From Explore.org, a "philanthropic multimedia project of the Annenberg Foundation that showcases cutting-edge non-profit efforts around the world through documentaries, short films, video moments and photography".

In preparation for the upcoming National Day holiday and the enormous amount of tourists that it will bring to the city's eateries, top restaurant review website Dazhong Dianping (roughly "Reviews by/for the Masses") has posted a list of the best locations to indulge in five of Shanghai's local specialties:

Well, it's been in the rumor mill for a long time, and it now looks like it's finally happening. Linkin Park, in the middle of a world tour, promoting their new (blahhh) album, will be playing at Hongkou Stadium on November 18th. Tickets are rumored to be selling fast and can be purchased here, but for shows like this there always seem to be an endless abundance of ticket scalpers selling tickets (beware the fakes) before the performance.

As the economic gap between China and North Korea widens, more and more young Chinese people are traveling to North Korea to see the sort of poverty their parents endured.

Planning an October holiday escape? Need some fresh air? How does Norway sound? The European Arctic. That should be far enough from the pull of Shanghai's pollution, right? Wrong. These days, there's no escaping China's chief export: Crappy air.